I hadn't been able to sleep.
I had taken my blanket and curled up on the floor instead.
For twenty-six of my twenty-seven years on the earth, I had been a nomad, a gypsy, a traveler. I had taken tokens when the vehicle we were in was getting too full, and shipped them to a friend of my father's in the States for safekeeping.
When I had shown up just shy of a year before, I had found a sprawling ranch in the south with its own food taking up almost three acres, and animals from horses, goats, and cows, to pigs, chickens, and rabbits taking up the rest of his twenty acres.
"Can't be trusting the government to be feeding us real food anymore," he had explained to my questioning look.
Having not spent more than a couple weeks of my life in the US all my life, I had no idea what he had meant, but had nodded as he led me to a huge barn where he stored all my mementos.
"Saved it all," he told me as he led me into a stall piled high with boxes. Not one had been opened. The first one I reached for was in handwriting from when I couldn't have been older than eight or nine.
He had saved it all too. Not one single item was missing. Items I had completely forgotten about, a tribal figurine of an owl from New Guinea, an intricate beadwork collar from Saraguro, a Dia de los Muertos skull from Mexico.
My entire life in boxes.
Taking them back to my new house and opening them had been a painful experience. Not because the memories were bad. Far from. But because they represented a part of my life that I could never have again. They represented a loss that cut so deeply that I was sure there would always be a hollow feeling inside.
But I had taken them, and the pain associated with them, and displayed them proudly on my shelves. They were a part of me. They were the endless memories that I thought about at night before the misery would set back in. They were pieces of the life I wanted again but knew I could never have.
The places I had walked before, the life I had led, it wasn't safe for me to try it alone. That reality was a bitter and metallic taste on my tongue. No matter how much scrubbing, it wouldn't go away. I had led such a carefree life, had enjoyed such freedom, that the prison that was living inside a female body that was weaker, that could be invaded, was absolutely bone-deep infuriating. I wouldn't trek the rainforest again. I wouldn't walk into tribal land without fear. I wouldn't be able to move through the most dangerous areas of Colombia or Mexico with the carefree ease of a woman flanked by a man so feared that no one would even think twice about staring at his daughter.
Until that man was taken away from her.
From me.
And for that, I would do whatever was necessary to exact vengeance.
On the man one floor below me who was, if he had even a single working brain cell in his head, drinking his body weight in water to try to get the last dregs of poison out of his body.
Yes, Luce No-last-name was going to pay.
Dearly.
An eye for an eye.
Or, a life for a life as it were.
"Diego, shush," I demanded half-heartedly, knowing it was a useless battle. Diego was all I had left of my father. He had outlived his owner. Hell, he could possibly even outlive me.
Diego was a thirty-inch-long blue-and-gold macaw who my father had owned since before I was born. He was messy, oftentimes aggressive, and his calls could be heard for miles in the wild. Which would tell you how loud he was inside the house. But he was family. He might give me splitting migraines several times a month, and maybe he chewed the edges of my coffee table, and used positively everywhere for a bathroom seeing as he had always been kept fully flighted, but I was, for all intents and purposes, used to it.
It had cost me a small fortune to smuggle him into the country. The laws regarding moving around exotic birds were absurd and unfounded, but wholly unavoidable. So, I had needed to employ and trust five different people with his wellbeing. I had spent two weeks with my heart in my throat waiting for him to finally cross into the US so I could look him over and settle him in.
"Yummy," he demanded back, about ten decibels higher than he had been when I shushed him in the first place.
Oh, the joys of bird ownership.
"Alright, alright," I said, reaching into the fridge for a bowl of fruit and veggies I had cut up for him, pouring it into a dish heavy enough for him to not be able to flip, and set it on the table. "Here's your food. Now, I need to feed the prisoner," I said, moving back to the fridge to throw together dinner.
I wanted him to suffer, sure.
I wanted him dead, eventually.
But until then, I needed to keep him well enough to get the information I wanted out of him.
Namely... why.
Why my father? Was he a good man? By general standards, maybe not. He had killed people. He had offered up information about dangerous poison to people who would use it to inflict pain on their enemies.
But he had standards.
He only killed men who had it coming, men who threatened him or me, men who he caught abusing animals in public forums, men who had tried to steal something of ours.
And he never operated on US soil.
So why would Luce have been after him?
Why had Luce sought him out when there were more deserving candidates much closer to home?
Questions that needed answers.
I would get them.
And to do that, I had to keep him fed, mostly-conscious, and relatively healthy.
I piled the beans, corn, rice, meat, and salsa onto the counter and set to cooking them up and rolling the burritos for both myself and the so-called vigilante in my basement. Maybe a part of me wanted to be petty and force-feed him something truly disgusting and borderline inedible. But the fact of the matter was, I was too lazy to cook twice. Plus, burritos would fit through the bars without me having to get too close to him and risk him yanking me against them and knocking me out.
It wasn't like that would do him any good. I wasn't an idiot; I didn't carry the keys on me. But still, I would prefer to avoid the massive headache it would cause.
I sat down beside Diego and ate my food, taking my time, trying not to rush the process. I would have plenty of time to spend with him. He wasn't going anywhere.
I got up, rolling his food in foil, then taking a deep breath before going back down the stairs.
"You know, you never did give me your name," he greeted me as soon as my foot hit the bottom landing.
"You can call me God," I offered as I walked toward the bars, finding him standing back from them several feet, head ducked to the side, watching me.
"Because you decide when I live or die," he assumed, looking down at the foil-wrapped cylinder as it rolled into his cell.
"Something like that," I agreed, lifting my chin.
Cool, collected, and detached.
That was how I wanted to present myself to him.
Let him believe I was some hired expert, just a cog in a wheel, that it was business.
If he knew how personal it was, he could use that against me. I didn't know how capable he was at things like emotional manipulation. In fact, I didn't really know much about him at all.
This was likely because no one seemed to know much about him.
There was a huge online fan club dedicated to him. Some insane chick wrote crazy, twisted, violent, and explicitly sexual erotica starring Luce.
Luce, the vigilante, was a shining star.
Luce, the man, was a complete enigma.
In fact, I could not find a trace of a man named Luce anywhere in New Jersey. Granted, cyber sleuthing was not my forte. In fact, very little was in the way of the internet. I had basic knowledge, but I spent most of my life off-the-grid in places that didn't even have wireless towers. So I wasn't even at the 'jealous ex-girlfriend notices her ex has a new girlfriend" stalker level. Social media as a whole was a complete enigma to me. Why does anyone care that you 'checked-in' at a local coffeeshop, or that you are going to such-and-such c
oncert next month?
Banal drivel.
If people wanted to connect with other people, why didn't they go out and do it?
I digress.
Anyway, yeah, maybe Luce wasn't a complete ghost to a trained professional. But I was no trained professional. So, to me, he was a wild card. Maybe he was a master manipulator. Maybe he was just a violent asshole.
Who knew.
"I'm Luce," he offered after a long silence. "But you already know that," he said as he walked closer toward me, those dark eyes unreadable, but I got the distinct feeling that they were somehow reading me. He leaned down, picking up the food, then standing. "Poisons expert. That bone structure. Your skin tone. This food. The slightest hint of an accent. South American, right? But removed. You're US born, but traveled. Sizable scar on your left wrist, raised, though it's long healed. Burn, most likely. At least five years old. And your hands are covered in scratches. Cat, maybe. But no," he said, squinting. "Not with those crescent shapes. Bird, probably. Given the other hints and the size of that beak impression, I'm guessing a macaw. Not the most likely pet for a woman your age. So, willed to you?"
Jesus.
I literally didn't know his last name or where he was born, but he got a huge chunk of information about me just by being in my presence for a couple of minutes.
"Your middle finger didn't set right and, judging by the blood marks I see on the floor, it was broken when you were putting in the bars. That implies that you don't have a whole crew of men one floor above waiting to come down here and take me out if something happens to you. No, you're working all by yourself. You're either that good... or that stupid."
I wanted to believe I was that good. The longer I listened to him, though, the more I was starting to believe I was perhaps a lot more stupid than I had realized.
I had underestimated his intelligence at least. It went to follow that I maybe underestimated his strength as well. Especially because he was on the thin side. There were plenty of martial artists that appeared skinny but were just as lethal as their more sizable counterparts.
"Are you about through trying to read me, because none of that is going to get you out of here."
"But I'm right, aren't I?" he asked, smiling. Which was, well, completely inappropriate. And maybe a bit telling as well.
He cared more about the facts than his freedom.
"I mean, if you're keeping a macaw here, it's only a matter of time before I hear it and it confirms my suspicions. We have to be closing in on sundown, right?" he asked, unraveling the foil, and taking a healthy bite without even looking at what I made him. "He will be doing his evening calls soon."
God, he was good.
What person who didn't own a parrot knew things like that?
He was a dangerous kind of smart.
And knowing his body count, there was an emphasis on dangerous.
I had no idea how he killed. There was a signature online for all his kills, but there were no details about it. Was he a gun man? Knives? Bare hands?
There were some fresh cuts and bruises on his hands.
"Trying to imagine if I would use them around your throat if given the chance?" he asked, making my gaze shoot up to his face, watching as he brought the food up to take another bite. "To save you the trouble, I don't hurt women. But to save my own ass, I would choke you out to get free. No permanent damage. I wouldn't even need to bruise that pretty neck, doll face."
Whoa.
Okay.
There was not, was absolutely not a weird fluttering feeling between my thighs at that.
Because that would be insane. Certifiable.
And if maybe there was that sensation, it was likely because I hadn't gotten laid in well over a year and a half, when this whole charade started. Hell, this was probably the closest I had been to a man near my own age in that amount of time.
Just hormones.
Stupid animal instinct.
"You should be more worried about your own neck than mine," I offered as he finished up the burrito, and rolled the foil.
"I'm assuming you are going to want me to toss this back," he said, holding up the foil. "You know, because filed down for long enough, it makes a pretty decent weapon."
And I did not know that.
Damnit.
"Of course," I agreed. "Just go ahead and toss it out."
"What? You don't want to come in and... take it from me?" he asked. It was maybe meant to be threatening, but the smirk on his face completely undermined that.
And that move was, well, stupid. If I didn't demand the foil back, he could have done what he said he could; he could make a weapon. Or, he could have threatened to make a weapon which would, rightly, make me go in there and get it from him, giving him a chance to try to take me down.
Why turn that down?
I thought the more time with him I spent, the more answers I would get.
That was proving entirely untrue.
"What's the matter, God, I'm not what you thought I would be, huh?"
That was an understatement.
"I don't particularly care who you are as a person."
"Ah, but that was a lie," he said, looking delighted at the idea. "You're just disappointed because you can't peg me. Tell you what, sweets, I'm in a giving mood. Ask me anything you want," he said, holding his arms out. "I'm all yours."
I wanted to ease into it.
That was the plan.
I wanted to get, and keep, the upper hand.
I wanted to feel him out.
But there was no stopping it.
It burst out of me.
"Why did you kill my father?"
FOUR
Luce
So, not some hired chick on a mission.
This was a personal vendetta.
That made her wholly unpredictable.
Did I kill her dad?
Who knew.
It was definitely a possibility.
Fact of the matter was, the rumors on the web about me were, well, a bit inflated. Did I do a number of the jobs? Of course I did. Did so-called fans perhaps claim I did a shitton of jobs I didn't do? Yep.
Until I asked, there was no way to know if she was working on flawed data or not. And even if she was, and I told her such, there was no guarantee that she would let me go. I mean, of course she would expect me to lie. My life was in her hands.
"Well, that depends," I said as her eyes went huge, like maybe she hadn't meant to ask me that. At least not yet. She likely had some long, drawn-out plan on extracting information from me. That was why she was feeding me so soon when I obviously could have gone days without eating before I even got lightheaded.
Good shit too.
She knew her way around the kitchen.
I had never been in a position to admire that about a woman.
"On?" she asked, jaw tight, chin lifted again.
"On who your father is," I said, shrugging, reaching up to straighten my hood pulls so they were even.
There was a long pause, something working behind her eyes.
"Alejandro Cruz."
Guess she was deciding on whether to tell me or not, because she knew it would give away her hand.
In the end, though, the need for truth often outweighed the need for self-preservation.
"So that makes you Evangeline," I said, smile pulling at my lips a little. That actually made everything make a fuckuva lot of sense.
Alejandro Cruz was something like, well, me, in a lot of ways. He was someone people whispered of; most believed he was an urban legend. And while, like me, maybe many of the tales were false or embellished so much that the truth was barely even discernible anymore, he was a real person. He did have real skills. Namely, the most lethal, the most respected, the most sought after man of his kind in the world. A poisons expert. A contract killer who could take down an enemy and leave no traces of what caused the death in the first place. Or, just as often, use his poisons for torture for his employers, extracting inf
ormation before the final, blissful end.
Alejandro Cruz was something else, though, too.
See, I had no problem as a whole with criminals. So long as they stayed in their own lanes and only killed people who were just as dirty as they were, I minded my own business.
That wasn't the case with Alejandro though.
I certainly didn't bring him in because he drugged some Colombian cocaine smuggler to get information for a rival cartel.
No, his crimes were a fuckuva lot worse than that.
"You haven't answered my question."
Because it was a little more complicated than she wanted to believe.
"Alejandro Cruz absolutely did die in my bunker."
I wasn't much for lying.
Or sugar-coating anything.
She wanted facts; I was giving her facts.
"You son of a bitch!" she shrieked, moving closer toward the cage bars, eyes wild, body rigid, everything about her suggesting that if there weren't bars between us, she would be clawing my face to shreds right about then. "You evil, selfish, piece of shit!" she went on, slamming her hands into the bars before turning and running back up the stairs.
I didn't have a chance to explain.
Sure, Alejandro Cruz definitely died in my bunker.
But I hadn't killed him.
I had barely gotten a chance to lay his offenses before him actually.
See, the thing about poisons experts is, you never actually know if they have some on them or not. It wasn't like the fucks carried around a suitcase full of carefully labeled vials, though I was sure they had some of those stashed somewhere. They did their best to hide them so they couldn't be found.
Alejandro Cruz, with a lifetime in the trade, knew exactly how to conceal emergency drugs to use in a critical situation. You would think it was for the use on others. At least, that was what I had assumed.
It shocked the shit out of me to walk back down there to find him still tied to the chair where I left him, clutching his rosary in his hand because I wasn't some animal who would deny someone the (to me) empty comforts of religion in their final hours, but stone dead.
At first I figured maybe the son of a bitch had a heart attack. While not common, it certainly was plausible. He wasn't a young man. He was facing his own inevitable death.
Vigilante Page 3
